Top international award for Icelandic bankers

The former managers of the Icelandic commercial banks and the Central Bank of Iceland were yesterday awarded the Ig Nobel Prize for Economics at Harvard University in the USA.

The prize is awarded by the editors of the satirical magazine which is distributed within Harvard. The Ig Nobel Prizes are designed to make people laugh first, and then think. The prizes are awarded in ten categories and the Icelandic contingent received their honour for their great performance over the year during which they have proved to the world how small banks are capable of rapid growth and equally rapid contraction again.

They received still further recognition for proving that the same can also be true for an entire country, Visir.is reports. Among other prize-winners are the Zimbabwean central bank chief, who won the prize for mathematics, and two Mexican chemists who claim to have created diamonds from tequila.

The Ig Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to the Irish police force for doling out 50 traffic offence fines to a man named Prawo Jazdy in a very short time. When the issue was looked into further, it transpired that Prawo Jazdy is the Polish for ‘Driving Licence’.